Cuckoo

by Richard Wright

  His subconscious was fighting fire with fire. They had placed lies in his head, and he had responded by vividly experiencing the truth.

  Now if only he could find a way to switch them off. With luck the simple acceptance of what was happening might mean that his mind no longer needed to spring these reminders on him. It was unlikely though. They were more like an automatic response. He would have to be prepared for it happening again. At least he had found a way to stop himself from passing out, but the physical symptoms were still uncomfortable and messy. Perhaps, when he had time, he might pay for a hypnotist to try and undo some of the damage his enemies had wreaked.

  Time was not a luxury he could enjoy yet. His clumsy attempts to threaten Stewart must have alerted his enemy to the fact that he was a potential troublemaker. If he had ascertained one thing for certain, it was that they were powerful. No casual hoodlum could be behind a scheme as elaborate as this. One look at the apartment he was sitting in was enough to confirm the expense of whatever operation he was victim of.

  Could it even be the case that he was a specimen in some government experiment? The idea seemed preposterous at first, but on closer examination it became more plausible. In fact, it seemed the most likely explanation for an unlikely scenario. Who else would have such access to every aspect of his life? Who else could arrange a deception of this scale?

  On the other hand, this was the age of post-millennial paranoia. All you had to do was switch on the television to see yet another show or movie wrapped around a conspiracy theory. People had an unnerving desire and ability to believe such things, but it was harder to dismiss them when he was living through one.

  Raising his mug to his lips, he realised he had finished his tea. Time for action then. What Greg needed was hard evidence, or at least something to demonstrate reasonable suspicion. Tomorrow he would have confirmation that the photographs he had dropped off were false, but would that be enough to evidence anything? Probably not. He had to have more facts.

  So, taking the brainwashing into consideration, who did he think was knowingly involved in the plot against him? Jennifer was ruled out, and Alex Carlisle was an innocent bystander who would never have been involved if Greg had not been so stubborn about having that refund. Stewart was less certain, but Greg could not dismiss the possibility that he too could be an unknowing dupe. No, of all the people who had been involved in his recent life there was only one who he could be certain was working against him.

  The man his wife was sleeping with, who had stolen the life and name of Gregory Summers. That was where he would find his facts.

  As a plan formed he chuckled at how preposterous a situation he was in. To acquire the information he needed, Greg was going to have to burgle his own home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  VISION

  It is foolish of him to feel fear now, he accepts this as truth. After everything already done to his body any concern is misplaced, for concern implies action and resolution, and there is none available to him. Knowing it is irrational does not quell the terror, and he squeezes his already closed eyes tighter shut.

  Were he on the outside he knows he would see little skin about his body. What remained would look tattered and red, would perhaps remind him of the bandages from some rancid Egyptian corpse. Even from the inside he knows that he will be unable to avoid seeing for much longer.

  Throughout the process he has been aware of his eyelids. As the skin has been eaten away his perception has turned from deep red, through scarlet, to the near white he sees now. Across his eyes the last layers of flesh are damp tissues, close to dissolving completely.

  In some unconscious way he realises that this will be the true beginning of his torment. White-hot lances of agony will replace his abstract awareness of pain. As long as he can close his eyes he is able to hide from the world. It is a hiding place that will soon be exposed.

  She will be there watching, with her demure smile. He will look into her eyes for those few moments that he is still capable of sight and know he is seeing reflections of where he will be when he dies.

  As he opens his mouth to scream and hot fluids sear the tender flesh of his throat, he feels the scars they burn through his lungs.

  It begins. Light stabs into his brain as the first minuscule hole appears. Others follow. With frightening speed he finds himself looking through fleshy gauze. For each tiny pinprick made, a splash of fluid seeps gently against the ball of his eye. He remembers an experiment at school, the eyeball of a bull being dissected in front of the biology class. It had been a strong rubbery material, difficult to cut, but the fluid working on him will not shirk at the task before it. It does not care how long it takes about its penetrating business. It has time.

  As his eyeballs burn he watches the remains of the lids vanish. As the last loose strips are sucked away by the slight current beyond, the world presents itself to him. Glass on all sides, and the fluid. Beyond that, in the larger world, she is watching. His golf ball eyeballs implore her to end this, to find someone else. She smiles.

  His vision blackens once more. At the same time as he feels the explosive bursting of his eyeballs, the gelatinous black fluid within them flowing to join the other liquids of the tank, he is glad of the blindness this heralds.

  He will never have to look on her again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KEYS

  It was two o’ clock in the morning, and Greg stood opposite his house in Fontside Avenue, wondering what the hell had possessed him. Just seeing his home, with everything that word implied, had almost turned him back. Now he was standing there trying to instil in himself the will to proceed. Excuses wheeled through his head, each supplying sufficient reason alone for him to abandon this course of action. His long, dark coat flapped about him as he tried to rationalise them away.

  Firstly, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to break into a house. A search of Jameson’s apartment had revealed nothing obvious in the way of burglary tools, which was not the biggest surprise. The place could well have been littered with housebreaking equipment that he wouldn’t recognise if he fell over it.

  On the other hand, this was his own home, and he knew precisely how to get inside. The key under the back step, which he had placed there himself, had allowed him access on previous occasions when he had found himself locked out. Tonight would be no different.

  What if he woke Jennifer up? She would be terrified of him, the man who loved her most in the world. Could he bear that? His heart said no, his head said yes. Yes, he would have to. When he had sorted this business out, when everything was over, she could be treated. She would remember. She would be grateful.

  Shivering, he tried to tell himself that it was the cold wind rather than the fear which caused his muscles to shudder so. A car drove past the entrance to the avenue, and he flinched. Cursing his nerves, he fought for the elusive calm that would make his task easy. Walk in, look around, walk out. Simple. They would probably never know he had visited. Glancing at his watch, he realised that he had been waiting for almost half an hour. It was now or never.

  Taking a deep breath, he crossed the black tarmac river of the road. In the light of the orange street lamps the house looked forbidding, cold. No warm meal awaited his homecoming; no fond embrace would greet him as he entered. Putting such self-pity to the back of his mind, hating himself for indulging in the first place, he made his way round to the back of the house. Remembering the garden as the warm vista of life he had nurtured was difficult in the shroud of night. Shapes he had birthed were unfamiliar, making the place which was once his home into a new environment. An alien landscape. He shut his mind against that image too, and what it stood for. Time enough to reclaim his home later.

  As silently as he could manage, he crouched down to the step that lay before the back door, prising it towards him. It gave no resistance. Slipping his hand beneath it, he felt his heart pound the beat of strained anticipation. He had never noticed how loud it sounded before. Looking
round, he saw that the lights in the windows of the neighbouring houses stayed off. How could they ignore such commotion? His hand continued the search.

  His fingers touched metal.

  Blood rushed to his head, and for a moment he thought he might faint. One tiny metallic talisman had now committed him to this act. No more excuses. If it had not been there he could have turned around, lived with the fact that he had tried. Now he had no choice, and was surprised that he felt a little stronger for it. Knowing that it might not be possible to force entry had led to indecision and doubt. Now that was over.

  Closing his fingers around the precious key, he withdrew it from beneath the stone step and faced the door. Previously it had been an ordinary wooden door. In his mind’s eye it was now a gateway. He did not yet know what lay beyond it, but the token in his hand would allow him access. He slotted the key into the lock. It had been recently oiled, which he knew because he had done it himself, and slid smoothly back.

  Pushing open the door, he stepped into the kitchen and closed it behind him. He had made little noise up to that point, and allowed himself a sigh of relief when he heard no sound to indicate that another might be awake and roaming. The darkness around him was a reassuring blanket capable of masking his presence from others; it was with regret that he reached for the small torch hanging from a cord around his neck. Flicking it on, he was almost surprised to find that the kitchen was as he had left it. After the earlier shock of his altered hallway he had somehow expected the whole house to be a strange new world.

  He was not there to visit the kitchen though, and he creeped through the folding door that marked the entrance to the living room. There was something he wanted to check, though it was also not his main goal. He suspected that if there were anything useful to be found, it would be in his study upstairs, next to the bedroom where Jennifer slept with his enemy. He rejected this notion too, suppressing the rage it caused. There was nothing he could do except gather the evidence he would need to reverse this state of affairs.

  The study was where he had kept his important documents and papers. His replacement would almost certainly do the same. Things there were safe from Jennifer’s eyes, for it was the one room in the house that had been his alone.

  Before visiting the study he had brief business in the living room. Shining his torch across the marble mantelpiece, he confirmed what he had suspected. Jennifer was as much a victim as he. Photographs on the shelf were as he remembered. The holiday to Spain, Jennifer’s parents, their university graduation shots; all were present and accounted for. This could not have been for his benefit, for he knew it was only luck which had brought him as far into the house as the hallway. That meant they were there to convince Jennifer.

  He sent a prayer heavenwards. Although it hurt him to know that these people had tampered with her mind, it was blessed relief to prove to himself that she was not a willing party to his torture.

  Strengthened by this revelation, he eased into the hallway. Having lived there for three years, every creak and squeak was well known to him. Even in the dark it was child’s play to move silently. Stepping along the passage, still the only room he had discovered to be altered, he noted with a pained smile that the dent the golf club had made in the wall was still there. If that had connected he might have been dead at the hands of the woman he loved.

  Moving on, he reached the bottom of the stairs, and stopped. For the first time since he had entered the building he heard something other than his clamouring heart. Something just at the edge of his hearing. A tide of adrenaline made him lightheaded again, and he fumbled with the button that would turn off the torch. It went out and the dark embraced him.

  Dropping to a crouch, Greg listened to the sound for some moments. It was a low, continuous noise, coming from upstairs. Slightly grating, it rose and fell with a haunting, familiar rhythm. A tear traced the edge of his nose as he realised what he was listening to. Jennifer. Snoring.

  At the same time as blossoms of nostalgia burst his gut, he was struck by a bout of helpless mirth. Sitting still, he tried to contain his laughter, clutching the bannister, terrified that he would give himself away. He knew it was stress which provoked this reaction from him, his body deciding that it was better to laugh than cry. After a few moments, when the silent giggles subsided, he climbed to his feet. Every nerve felt strained to capacity, and his stomach ached from holding back the laughter. But nothing amusing existed in the prospect of the stairs.

  Standing at the bottom, he gazed up to the darkness. He had never feared the night, but now he understood where such terrors came from. On the ground floor the dark was the simple black of night. Moonlight still seeped through windows, enhanced in places by the harsher glow of street lamps. Upstairs was another world. The hallway of the first floor had no windows, no light. It was the dark of creeping things. The black of hiding.

  Well, he thought as he gathered himself, it can bloody well hide me then. Choosing not to use his torch, though he very much wanted to, he put a hesitant foot on the first step. By the eighth he was immersed in gloom. The snoring grew louder and Greg had reason to fear this. Where the blackness would conceal an opponent from his sight, the snoring made it difficult to hear the tiny sounds which might still give him warning of their approach.

  Ninth step.

  Tenth step. Still darker, still louder. Greg knew that the deep breathing of his wife was only loud in isolation, but it seemed as if she was screaming her sighs at the silent house.

  Eleventh step.

  Twelfth step.

  Thirteenth and final step.

  The snoring stopped. Already taut nerves screamed at Greg as a deafening silence swamped his senses. A trap. All his instincts tried to talk to him at once. It was a trap, he had been lured upstairs by the welcoming sounds of his wife at peace, and now he was caught. Frozen in place, his legs refusing to implement the desire to run, all he could do was stand and wait. Expecting someone to leap on him at any second, he closed his eyes and trembled.

  Hours tried to pass in this state. He had no idea how many minutes dragged themselves past before a new sound pierced his ears. Opening his eyes wide, he swept them through the dark, trying to spot movement. Then he understood that the noise was nothing more than the resumption of the snoring, altered in pitch and rhythm. Greg slumped. Jennifer must have turned over in her sleep, or perhaps woken before drifting off again. Glad that his legs had mutinied against the desire to flee, he took the final step onto the landing, wondering how burglars coped with the stress of breaking into a home.

  Still recovering from his shock, trying hard not to shake, he sneaked past the bedroom, listening hard for anything more threatening than the sounds of deep sleep, and was gratified to hear nothing but that. Opposite the bedroom door was the bathroom. An unwelcome observation, for his bladder felt ready to burst through anxiety. He shuffled on. Past the guest bedroom, past the airing cupboard, to the door at the end of the short passage. Small distances had become outrageously enlarged in the dark. Though he knew he had travelled no more than a few feet from the stairs to the door, he felt the journey had taken forever.

  Relieved, he reached out for the handle that would allow him passage to his destination. Finding it, he twisted and pushed.

  The door held firm.

  Anxious, he pushed a second time. No movement at all. The door was locked. It was a possibility that he had not allowed himself to consider. The second reason why the study was the safest place for his enemy to store documents away from the curious eyes of his wife was that it was the only internal door with a lock.

  Fighting back tears of frustration, Greg stood helpless. The darkness around him had now ceased to be a concealing cloak, subtly altering itself into an externalisation of the emptiness within him. Staring blankly into it, he sought to find just the faintest glimmer of hope there. Nothing presented itself. Desolation and despair turned to anger. He was so close. Deep inside enemy territory, he was inches away from what he sought. O
n the other side of the door the unattainable study mocked his efforts. One key. That was all he needed.

  Clarity swept through him. One key, which he knew where to find. A key he had always kept close by him. A key which lay in the top drawer of his dresser. In his bedroom. Could he walk into the room, retrieve the key and get back to the study without waking the pair who slept there? Could he bear to?

  Again the fear. Knowing that he had little choice was small consolation, for the enemy had grown large in his imagination. He tried to remember that the last time they clashed it had been Greg who was victor in battle. Then he had been enraged, furious at the strange invasion of his life. Now he was on edge, mentally and physically exhausted. No competition. Worse, if he woke them Jennifer would see him, terror shining in her eyes, and Greg would feel his heart powder to nothing. Would he be able to strike the man she thought she was in love with?

  Despite these thoughts, he had gone too far to throw everything away through cowardice. He would retrieve the key.

  Releasing the handle, he turned his back on the sanctuary that had denied him. Like a man in a dream he waded back through the dark of the passage.

  Guest bedroom. Airing cupboard. His bedroom.

  Though he knew there was no one to see him, he felt foolish standing outside the door to his own room. Despite himself, he remembered being six again. Waiting outside his parents’ room, not daring to enter because he knew his father did not believe in the monster he had heard in the closet.

  A grunt from within shocked him back to his senses, but he knew it had only been the sound of a sleeping man. Jennifer snored on.

  Now or never. His life was rapidly becoming governed by that single phrase.

  Before he could talk himself out of it he grabbed the round handle of the door and opened it. Now the snoring was a terrible sound, the monstrous cacophony of some dread beast he dare not wake. Propping open the door with a shaking hand, he allowed time for his eyes to adjust to the faint light which crept past the heavy curtains. It was strange to see again, for he felt he had spent a lifetime in the dark of the hallway.